The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses

Explanatory Notes

epigraph 1. Le Diable Boiteux: a 1707 novel by author Alain-Rene Lesage (1668–1747). The Frenchman Lesage based his work on an earlier volume titled El Diablo Cojuelo (1641), by the Spaniard Luis Vélez de Guevara, in which the lame, or boiteux, demon Asmodeus escorts a young Castilian student around Madrid—lifting the lids of the houses in the process, so as to expose the vices and follies of the people inside.Lesage substitutes Paris for Madrid,much as Gunn switches the setting for his own Asmodean observations to New York. The aim of all three authors is the same: to provide a narrative perspective that sees through household walls. preface 1.Layard:Austen Henry Layard,1817–1894.The Parisian Layard was a pioneer in the emerging field of archaeology during the Victorian period. Working alongside fellow Frenchman Paul Emile Botta, he helped to uncover the ancient civilization of Assyria, located in what today are the northern plains of Iraq. A prolific writer, Layard published just a few years before the appearance of Gunn’s Physiology three accounts of his experiences in the Near East.Gunn could have drawn on the English translations of two of these works,Nineveh and Its Remains (1849) and Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853), for an account of the Bedouins, an Arab nomadic tribe. chapter i — introductory, metropolitan, and anticipatory 1.Gascon: both a people and a dialect language,rooted in the Gascony region of southwest France. Gunn’s “sage Gascon” might be the seventeenth-century historical figure Comte d’Artagnan, who, as a real-life Gascon and captain of the Musketeers of the Guard under Louis XIV, in part inspired Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel, The Three Musketeers. Tupper: Martin Farquhar Tupper,1810–1889.English writer and poet,whose long-running serial Proverbial Philosophy (first installment, 1837) consisted of blank-verse moral musings disguised as prose. 2. Carlyle’s Past and Present: Thomas Carlyle, 1795–1881. Scottish essayist and historian, who offered Victorian readers of works like Past and Present (1843) an ethical critique of modern industrial society. 3. Astor Library: John Jacob Astor, 1763–1848. At the time of his death, the German immigrant Astor was the wealthiest man in America—his fortune based in part on vast Manhat175 E X P L A N A T O R Y N O T E S explanatory notes 176 tan real-estate holdings. Astor’s will set aside $400,000 for the creation of a non-circulating reference library in New York. That library opened its doors in 1849, and in time supplied a substantial portion of the collection of the New York Public Library. chapter ii — of looking out for a boarding-house 1.Gow Chrom,in Scott’s novel: Sir Walter Scott,1771–1832.A popular Scottish author of historical romances, Scott achieved international celebrity before the appearance of his novel The Fair Maid of Perth (1828), which relates in fictional form the Battle of the Clans fought in the Highlands of Perth,Scotland,in 1396.Tradition records that the harness-maker Henry Smith, also known by the names Hal o’ the Wynd and the Gow-Chrom, offered himself as a last-minute substitute combatant for one of the warring clans. 2. Herald, Tribune, or Times: three contemporary New York newspapers, founded, respectively , in 1835, 1841, and 1851. The New York Herald was among the first of the city’s penny newspapers, whose lively, often sensational, coverage appealed to working-class readers. Both the Tribune and Times,meanwhile,maintained a more sober tone in their commitment to serious news reportage. 3. Greenwich and Hudson streets: parallel north-south thoroughfares in Manhattan. The reference is to the neighborhoods adjoining both streets in the lower sections of the island, known for their mixed residential and commercial character. In Gunn’s day, this area had a high concentration of boardinghouses, and would have been seen as less than genteel—a working-class “downtown” counterpart to what Gunn describes as the privileged precincts of “up-towndom.” 4.Hoboken: a city in New Jersey,located on the west bank of the Hudson River across from Manhattan. New Yorkers of the mid-nineteenth century could travel to and from Hoboken by ferryboat. Williamsburg: a neighborhood in Brooklyn, opposite Manhattan across the East River. 5. sanatory: conducive to health; not to be confused with sanitary, meaning of or related to health generally. 6. Five Points and Cow Bay: notorious slum districts of nineteenth...